It is customary to place decorations adjacent to a gravestone or other grave marker. Typically, a container having flowers or other decorations therein is mounted or attached to such a stone, or placed near the stone on the ground. Cemetery groundskeepers find memorials placed on the ground near a grave to be obstacles difficult to maneuver around with mowers and the like. As a result of the difficulty in maneuvering around such memorials, cemeteries have promulgated rules requiring that decorations such as flowers, plants, plastic flowers and the like, must be removed prior to the days that the mowing and trimming is to be done. Persons placing such decorations near a grave want the decoration to be displayed as long as possible, if not permanently, and thus are greatly inconvenienced by the necessity to remove the decoration from the gravesite prior to the mowing and trimming process.
A variety of devices have been invented over the years to eliminate the requirement that the gravestone memorial be removed. Examples of such devices are shown in the following patents: U.S. Pat. No. 4,640,045 to Newsbitt et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 3,511,461 to Clark. A primary shortcoming of the devices developed in the prior art for displaying flowers on a gravestone is the lack of flexibility in adapting the device to mount on a variety of gravestones. Additionally, the devices of the prior art incorporate certain metallic components, and rainwater dripping over the metallic components produces rust and subsequently rusty water drips upon the gravestone, thereby discoloring the surface of the gravestone. In addition, the variety of shapes and contours of gravestones, in particular the front to back width and the contour of the top surface of the gravestone, present something of a dilemma to the saddle planters of the prior art in achieving the most beneficial positioning of the mounting structures for the devices. It is desired to provide the public with a saddle planter which requires no tools for installation. A device which is more easily configured or adaptable to various sizes of gravestones and simple to install on a gravestone is needed.